Reptile & Amphibian Forums

As you look on the classifieds it seems too often it has animals that were from Ric Blair. If I recall right there was a big stink with some tainted locality animals before. These snakes are being sold as pure or locality. This seems to be a little bit of a problem, does anyone feel that this is hurting the purity of the captive bred stock???
Now I have nothing against Ric at all, I have talked with him several times through the years and he seems like a nice guy all the way. I’m just wondering if we shouldn’t re visit this topic and see what should be done to keep animals locality specific when that is the desired goal, or should these snakes truly for the sake of purity of blood lines be considered GENERICS? This is how I view them personally. There are several people on the forum that tend to have stock that is somewhat questionable, so there for I would not buy from them if I was looking for pure animals. How does anyone else feel about the lack of good pure stock? Please remember this is not a jab at ric but rather a point that I would like to make. I believe we have tainted blood lines that run very rampant in the breeding community and as laws stiffen I think there is a need to clean up the locality gene pool.

Oh yea PS: TP&W still suck with their policies (that was a jab for the TP&W agents that read this forum lol) Just kidding.

Let’s stay on track with this one and don’t send me stupid emails about how I don’t understand the mix up some folks have had in their collections.

I think anyone looking for locality specific animals knows exactly what they want and will not settle for less. If an animal is not 100% verifiable then it is not "locality specific". I know thats what I want and thats all you will get from me.

For me, it depends on what you are talking about exactly. For example, I believe some of that mix up was in regards to some Lajitas verses Juno animals (I could be wrong or there could be other stuff I do not remember). Just because something was screwed up, or thought to be screwed up in one area of that collection, does not mean they all were. I'm biased towards his River Road animals since I have 2 from him. They exhibit what I would expect to see out of that line and I have no reason to question them. I do not think it would be fair to say ALL of his stuff was screwed up. Some of us may draw lines in different places, but ultimately, we don't know a dang thing unless we catch it ourselves.

Personally, for me to enjoy this hobby, I have to take some stuff at face value combined with good judgment. If a fellow herp guy is selling some stuff I want, has a good name and the animals are not showing any morphological red flags, then I'm good. However, I will not buy from anyone if any one of these variable are knocked out.

For others, a well documented paper trail backed up by testimonial to the actual capture is absolute.

To each his own.

For the record, I believe Ric to be a straight shooter. He may have had a mix up on something, which I can neither confirm nor deny, but that doesn't mean he made mistakes all the time. I certainly do not believe that he ever willfully committed any crime against pure alterna lines either. Couple that with the fact that I believe he was intentional with his breeding and you have a guy that is not likely going to make those mistakes. unfortunately, not likely does not mean, not ever.
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Brad Alexander

FullSpectrumHerps.com

Oh I agree I like ric, I just used his name because its active in the classifieds and there has been a mix up, there are lots of other people that have tainted blood line on here. The point I was making is the captive blood lines are extremely mixed up now in my mind. If someone has had mistakes or on purposes should we know considered those animals as generics. Allot should be done to clean up what is portrayed as locality.

"Oh I agree I like ric, I just used his name because its active in the classifieds and there has been a mix up, there are lots of other people that have tainted blood line on here. The point I was making is the captive blood lines are extremely mixed up now in my mind. If someone has had mistakes or on purposes should we know considered those animals as generics. Allot should be done to clean up what is portrayed as locality."

"there has been a mix up, there are lots of other people that have tainted blood line here."

I don't agree with what you are saying. You are suggesting that ALL of Ric's alterna are mixed up. I do not believe they are and consideration should be made for each line or even each individual animal.

"he point I was making is the captive blood lines are extremely mixed up now in my mind."

Maybe they are, maybe they are not. That is for each one of us to decide on a base by base sale. We can all choose to buy or not buy what we want depending on the criteria we decide to live by. If you feel they are all mixed up, you are your own man and you can do what you want. All I see happening here is someone trashing on other people.

"If someone has had mistakes or on purposes should we know considered those animals as generics."

Like I said, that is up to each one of us to decide on our own. If you are trying to tell everyone that they should live by your standards, I can tell you now, it is not going to happen.

"Allot should be done to clean up what is portrayed as locality."

You can't make everyone do as you deem necessary to "clean up" these blood lines. Everyone has their own set of standards. We can all simply choose to buy from who we feel is doing what is right and there are plenty of people out there that will buy from anyone regardless. There is nothing we can do about that.

Prime example:

If you or anyone else believe my blood lines are impure because I have 2 females from Ric Blair, that is their call. I have no problem with it. I am confident of what I have and I will continue to pass it on as such. I also have a pair of wild caught long term captive, 0.1 from Chris Garcia and 2.2 Vivids. If people want to stay away from what comes out of my Ric Blair line, that is their choice.

Maybe your goal here is to simply educate, or remind people of who has had mix-ups, or worse yet who has purposely crossed localities and sold as pure. Whichever the case, I think all you are really doing is throwing someone under the bus, which I think is not cool.

Like I said before, just because Ric may have had a mix up does not mean all his blood lines are screwed up. ALSO, like I said, if you choose to avoid those blood lines, that is your call and nobody is going to care either way.

You said a lot of people have tainted blood lines. Are you going to come out and name them all one by one? The community at large knows who to avoid. There is also a recommended breeders list on this site to help people make good decisions. I think I'll go ask Joe to consider me for that list now.

There will always be a good core of individuals doing right by each blood line. I do not think there is any emergency in making sure all is well in the world of alterna. Besides, beyond being sure of what we are doing and purchasing, there is really nothing we can do about it.

Brad
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Brad Alexander

FullSpectrumHerps.com

I am not throwing anyone under the bus at al. The fact is, as people buy these mixed up blood line (by accident of course lol) people have bought them, breed them or brokered the animals out, this further makes the blood lines tainted. Eventually at the rate we are going we will have very honest to goodness viable strains. Dont just say well so and so got bad blood lines from billy bob but i know my stuff is pure from billy bob. Fact is a shadow is now cast on animals from billy bob!!!!!!! So if you further breed billy bobs snakes as pure, you are doing nothing more but adding to the impurity of the strains. I dont even breed alterna anymore but if i was i kinda know which billy bob strains to avoid if i want a guareenty of locality.
Allot of people are buying snakes at face value and breeding or selling these animals, as laws become tighter it is a must to clean up the breeding herd of captive animals. If i had snakes from any one of many billy bobs i would not sell them as locality just to help maintain a purity of captive stock. If others refuse to look at their stock and say hey there is a chance i might have obtained some bad blood lines, then they just become billy bob themselves.
I hope you understand that we all have obtained bad blood lines in the past and you do have some type of responsibility as a breeder to help keep things pure when you represent them as such. If you believe that your snakes are pure but someone elses are not, then i think your in denial and you further have the abbillity to spread bad blood lines.

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"I am not throwing anyone under the bus at al."
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By saying Ric had ONE mix up in ONE of his lines, which had nothing to do with another, all of sudden this means ALL of his lines are mixed up (River Road, Christmas, Sanderson, Black Gap, etc, etc). With that, you are indeed throwing him under the bus. I believe he did have 1 mix up, that doesn't mean all of his lines are now screwed up, it just means there was a mistake in ONE line.

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"The fact is, as people buy these mixed up blood line (by accident of course lol) people have bought them, breed them or brokered the animals out, this further makes the blood lines tainted."
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The point I've been trying to make is that you are assuming they are ALL mixed up. I am assuming they are not. I contend that each person, along with each line deserves it's own background check. I start with the person, if they are known to be unscrupulous breeders, I write off their entire group, regardless the line, I do not bother with them. If the breeder passes scrutiny and is known for being a straight shooter, I move on to the background check of the animal. Just because a good breeder has one mishap does not mean I personally feel I need to write them off. If you operate differently, good for you. The problem I have with so quickly writing someone off is that MOST people did not keep absolute records from the original wild caught. Even if you can trace it back, it means nothing since you were not there to see it yourself. At some point, you have to factor into the equation much more than absolutes because you simply are not going to have them in 99.9% of the hobby. There are an incredible amount of variable you need to plug into the equation in order to ascertain whether or not the line in question is good. With this, comes a lot of gray area. You are suggesting that the answer is either black or it is white. I do not agree.

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"Eventually at the rate we are going we will have very honest to goodness viable strains."
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What?!

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"Dont just say well so and so got bad blood lines from billy bob but i know my stuff is pure from billy bob. Fact is a shadow is now cast on animals from billy bob!!!!!!! So if you further breed billy bobs snakes as pure, you are doing nothing more but adding to the impurity of the strains."
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In this particular case, Billy Bob is Ric Blair. You don't get to switch now, besides, this can't cover everyone, it HAS to be based on individuals. Again, you are trying to level the playing field and say that every breeder is exactly equal. This couldn't be further from the truth and this issue has come up a few times, including against Dan Johnson and his Huecos. Ric Blair isn't just anyone. You HAVE to consider the person and everything about them. It is not right, in my mind, to say that just because there was a mix up with his Lajitas line, you now have to throw out all his lines. If it was someone that was already a questionable character, sure, but since it is someone that's been in the hobby for many years with an obvious desire for purity, than I say you have to factor that in.

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"I dont even breed alterna anymore but if i was i kinda know which billy bob strains to avoid if i want a guareenty of locality."
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Then why are you starting trouble?

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"Allot of people are buying snakes at face value and breeding or selling these animals, as laws become tighter it is a must to clean up the breeding herd of captive animals."
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Sure, I agree, but if you think you or I can do anything about it, go ahead and try. Do you think this conversation is going to change anyone's mind?

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"If i had snakes from any one of many billy bobs i would not sell them as locality just to help maintain a purity of captive stock."
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Good for you, that is your choice.

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"If others refuse to look at their stock and say hey there is a chance i might have obtained some bad blood lines, then they just become billy bob themselves."

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I can only speak for myself in that I am more then confident that my stock is pure. I purchased 1 female RR from Ric and he gave me another later on. I'm taking him at face value but I am also factoring in other things. Morphologically, his RR's appear to be pure and exhibit a look I'd expect from RR animals. On top of that, he's a straight shooter with an absolute desire for purity. Because of this, I feel I can take him at face value that his RR's are pure. Could there be a mix up in his RR's? There could be, just as there could be with anybody's animals. But there has not been any red flags to indicate otherwise. There are reasons why the Lajitas animals came into question, and that was because of the red flags associated with a few animals. If there are issues, they will come to the surface.

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"I hope you understand that we all have obtained bad blood lines in the past"
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I don't accept what you are saying as fact. If you want to lump that in with all your conspiracy theories, that's fine by me. Just don't expect others to follow.

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"and you do have some type of responsibility as a breeder to help keep things pure when you represent them as such."
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Exactly correct, which is why I take into consideration so many parts of the issue at hand.

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"If you believe that your snakes are pure but someone elses are not, then i think your in denial and you further have the abbillity to spread bad blood lines."
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First of all, I'm not the one pointing the fingers. Second of all, I've made abundantly clear why I believe my lines are pure. If it is not good enough for you, that's fine by me. Simply stay clear of my animals and move on. Meanwhile, you can work real hard at throwing my name under the bus too.

And finally, good luck with your crusade. Get back to us in about 10 years and let us know how you are doing with that.

OR...

You can be a real part of cleaning up the problem. Joining HCU and being an asset to the cause, we can work together to make things right.
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Brad Alexander

FullSpectrumHerps.com

Lots of accusations have been thrown around over the last few years. Can mistakes happen? Yes. Do people do things intentional? Yes. But sometimes all of it is true and sometimes it's bull. The people involved are the only ones that will truly ever know certain things and this is where we decide to trust or not to trust them. It seems the people who have had an accidental mixup have taken more heat than the person who came on this forum and said that they release snakes from one locality into another. What's wrong with that picture?

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Steve W.

LOL that creates genetic diversity, by introducing new genetics into isolated gene pools. But never has that person said im letting a river road snake go on river road, no sire not at all. He said I let Langtry stock go on river road.

That person. lol
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Steve W.

Why not just ask the seller exactly where they got their stock from, and expect a detailed answer. If it seems questionable from there you can always contact the people that they got their stock from (in some cases). As long as the seller is straightforward about what he has and actually knows the history of their animals it is fairly easy to root out questionable animals.

Though some guys (usually the ones I would not buy from anyway) get defensive and pissed at just asking the history of the parents. That is usually a telltale sign, for me, when instead of answering your questions about their stock they act outraged that you would ask and then ramble on about their reputation as a breeder and blah, blah, ...

I have even had a guy respond to my questions about verifying the the claimed locality, by sending a response saying that they would refuse to sell me the animals and that I was rude and blah, blah, .... All for some very straightforward questions that any informed buyer would ask.

James - I like your post and agree 100 percent. If the breeders are open with the locality background and sources it should help determine if the facts are enough to warrant the term "Locality" animals...

My guess is that each year it will become more and more difficult to dermine locality as the collecting law is in place, current animals get old and die off and with little new blood flow from different spots.

Best Wishes, StevenX

LOL, I had a similar situation I thought was equally crazy just the other day. I asked the seller to provide pictures of the parents and he refused. He gave me some retarded answer as to why and it only insulted my intelligence. I gave him crap for it and told him if he chooses not to share photos of the parents then I choose not to purchase animals from him. Part of a background check includes seeing the parents.
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Brad Alexander

FullSpectrumHerps.com